#archistratego

LIVE

5:10 PM & i’m folding another sunset under my tongue,
its hues bleached out by the cold into cotton-cloud pale.
& it goes like this every year, coming back to this frost
to watch ice braid itself clear into my hair, & every year
this season is a little less cold than memory tells me,
but the air is still taut with it. still springing away
from every breath that wants to draw it in. here,
the stars whisper flicker-faint, only showing their faces

if you strain your sight beyond the city’s ice-spire heights,
their frozen illumination. when you learn to worry enough
about forgetting how we hold on to warmth, instinct
guards against that loss with fierceness. but i know

i talk too much about forest fires for someone
who’s never witnessed a conflagration. so this time,
instead, i’ll tell you about the ice-storms that used to
come between snowfalls. how the force of their winds
snapped branches as easy as icicles, twisted woodlands
into crystal-palace halls that glittered even in the dark.

& the moon has slipped now beneath the curving night,
but its sickle-beam weaving still holds the velvet coat
of the sky together. every white stitch saying just wait
a little longer, reminding me i still want to tell you
about never understanding how to trace the gleam
of constellations. & how i want to try again. & about

those rarest of winter sunrises, the ones that drip
peach-juice vivid: the horizon offering its dawnbloom
over & over, like a glimpse of all the love-letters ever
written to light. i still want to climb up to see the sky
made a saltshaker, every ice-white star plummeting
to earth in flaring promise. & love pooling in the melt
of each landing, warm enough to draw all the world
into growing again.

—q.l. | for @femmelovely <3